26 November 2007

I have been waking up in the night, for several days now, afloat on asea of clarity and spaciousness and acceptance of all that is. Then inthe morning, it is as if a switch has been flipped, and the brain turnson all its meaningless, space-filling, self-absorbed chatter. It's painful.

This morning the clarity of the night is completely vanished, and my ownwords feel dull and heavy, and yet there is a thing I am trying tocommunicate. Then I found these words from J. Krishnamurti, and althoughthey do not say everything I am feeling, they are a better start than Ican generate right now. I would use slightly different language here andthere. Somehow to catch what is for me, at least at moments, a vividexperience of the absolute unity of all existence. I swear, it is verysimple. The brain perceives through division and distinction. Thereforewe see a world divided and made up of individual things.

But the underlying reality, which the brain can not perceive due to itslimitations, is unity. One magnificent, living, dynamic being which iseverything that is. There is no separation that has any reality. Thebrain can not see this, but there is a mysterious way in which even thebrain can know this truth, and can at least make a start at behavinglike it is an expression of the whole, rather than a separate andindependent "self." But it is so deeply conditioned in its behavior, andin its very function made for distinction, that it can never quite getthe thing itself. So we must live from a place other than the world wesee and experience and think about. This is so hard to describe. Thereality is just too simple and too expansive at the same time for thebrain to capture it.

Krishnamurti talks about it as relationship. Yes, it is that. But notthe relationship of one separate thing to another separate thing.Rather, the interrelationship of parts that have no functional meaningwithout each other. This is the nature of the world we live in. We haveno meaning without each other, and there is not one single person or onesingle blade of grass or one mote of dust that can be removed from thatweb of interrelated meaning, not one, without rendering the whole thingchaotic and meaningless.

I know this makes no sense to the analytic mind, but it is true,nevertheless.

JLC

--------------J. KrishnamurtiBrockwood Park25 February 1983

There is a tree by the river and we have been watching it day after dayfor several weeks when the sun is about to rise. As the sun rises slowlyover the horizon, over the trees, this particular tree becomes all of asudden golden. All the leaves are bright with life and as you watch itas the hours pass by, that tree whose name does not matter - whatmatters is that beautiful tree - an extraordinary quality seems tospread all over the land, over the river. And as the sun rises a littlehigher the leaves begin to flutter, to dance. And each hour seems togive to that tree a different quality. Before the sun rises it has asombre feeling, quiet, far away, full of dignity. And as the day begins,the leaves with the light on them dance and give it that peculiarfeeling that one has of great beauty. By midday its shadow has deepenedand you can sit there protected from the sun, never feeling lonely, withthe tree as your companion. As you sit there, there is a relationship ofdeep abiding security and a freedom that only trees can know.

Towards the evening when the western skies are lit up by the settingsun, the tree gradually becomes sombre, dark, closing in on itself. Thesky has become red, yellow, green, but the tree remains quiet, hidden,and is resting for the night.

If you establish a relationship with it then you have relationship withmankind. You are responsible then for that tree and for the trees of theworld. But if you have no relationship with the living things on thisearth you may lose whatever relationship you have with humanity, withhuman beings. We never look deeply into the quality of a tree; we neverreally touch it, feel its solidity, its rough bark, and hear the soundthat is part of the tree. Not the sound of wind through the leaves, notthe breeze of a morning that flutters the leaves, but its own sound, thesound of the trunk and the silent sound of the roots. You must beextraordinarily sensitive to hear the sound. This sound is not the noiseof the world, not the noise of the chattering of the mind, not thevulgarity of human quarrels and human warfare but sound as part of theuniverse.

It is odd that we have so little relationship with nature, with theinsects and the leaping frog and the owl that hoots among the hillscalling for its mate. We never seem to have a feeling for all livingthings on the earth. If we could establish a deep abiding relationshipwith nature we would never kill an animal for our appetite, we wouldnever harm, vivisect, a monkey, a dog, a guinea pig for our benefit. Wewould find other ways to heal our wounds, heal our bodies. But thehealing of the mind is something totally different. That healinggradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on thetree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and thehills covered, hidden, by the clouds.

This is not sentiment or romantic imagination but a reality of arelationship with everything that lives and moves on the earth. Man haskilled millions of whales and is still killing them. All that we derivefrom their slaughter can be had through other means. But apparently manloves to kill things, the fleeting deer, the marvellous gazelle and thegreat elephant. We love to kill each other. This killing of other humanbeings has never stopped throughout the history of man's life on thisearth. If we could, and we must, establish a deep long abidingrelationship with nature, with the actual trees, the bushes, theflowers, the grass and the fast moving clouds, then we would neverslaughter another human being for any reason whatsoever. Organizedmurder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, thenuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated againstwar. We have never said that to kill another human being is the greatestsin on earth.

I have spent my life asking questions about our place on Earth; working for peace, social justice and environmental conservation; living a contemplative, listening life; and sharing my experiences through writing and education. I have studied the vocal behavior of marine mammals and songbirds. I now devote much of my time to recording natural soundscapes and composing and performing music that is inspired by those soundscapes.
The environmental situation is critical, and solutions are urgently needed that touch the deepest levels of who we think we are, how we view the world, and how our actions mirror those beliefs.